Great step forward in understanding genetics of cancer

By Biocat

The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) has studied more than 7,000 tumor genomes in patients and has discovered more than 20 different mutation processes that cause the 30 most common types of cancer. This new knowledge of the molecular mechanisms responsible for this disease could help prevent it. The work, by teams from 14 countries coordinated by Dr. Michael Stratton of the Sanger Institute (Cambridge, United Kingdom), was published in August in the journal Nature.

The team led by Dr. Elías Campo, of Barcelona’s Hospital Clínic and the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (Idibaps), and Dr. Carlos López-Otín, of the University of Oviedo Institute of Oncology, have identified the two key mechanisms that cause mutations in chronic lymphocytic leukemia: one related to age and the other to repairing damaged DNA. Both centers are part of the Spanish Consortium for the Study of the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Genome.

Spanish scientists have discovered two mutation models in chronic lymphocytic leukemia: from age and the DNA repair system

All cancers originate from DNA mutations in the body’s cells over a person’s life and, depending on the factors that cause them, each mutational process leaves a specific pattern. Previously, scientists knew the mutational signatures provoked by agents like tobacco and ultraviolet light, which are responsible for the development of certain cancers, but the mechanisms involved in most tumors were unknown.

Dr. Elías Campo explained that "we are seeing one of the first examples of the new vision offered by the mass, coordinated sequencing of the genomes of various types of cancers.” He also said that “defining the map of these mutational processes is an important step forward in discovering how and why cancer develops.”